Children's Librarian Audrey Leppanen suggests that in order to bring books alive, you:

• Get over feeling stupid
• See voices as playful and fun
• Read when your child can listen
• Use puppets with books to help teach lessons
• Enlarge and expand on books
• Bring puppet voices back to your reading

Laurie Joy Haas, Executive Producer of Words that Cook!™ and co-author of Read it Aloud! A parent’s guide to sharing books with young children, suggests that with stories you can:

• Play reading and spelling games

Like Musician and Dad Ben Rudnick and his daughter:

• Make up songs together by putting life into words
• Document and publish kids' achievements
• Get kids' imaginations going with words

Steven Ratiner, a Poet and Writing Consultant recommends you:

• Use poetry to learn together
• Don't censor – Let anything happen in poetry
• If child shares, examine and question honestly as peers
• Let children choose when to share
• Take quiet moments for yourself
• Focus on moments of rich material for writing
• Read one poem a night for pleasure
• Find the great poets that speak to you
• Look for poetry anthologies first, such as those by:
  Richard Lewis – Asia and the world poetry for all ages
  Naomi Shihab Nye – poetry for middle school/high school

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